


Grip

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Choking, Death Threats, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fantasizing, Inline with canon, M/M, Masturbation, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-21 00:24:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Hannibal had known, had been sure, could taste Will’s bloodlust ozone-hot in the air between them; but the saying is a step forward, closing what distance remains between them, like Will reaching out to band his grip around the stitched scars running over Hannibal’s wrists." Hannibal indulges in his own version of Will's fantasy.





	Grip

The office is dark in Will’s absence.

Hannibal could turn a light on. There is a lamp at the corner of his desk, ready to offer the dim gold of illumination to radiate into the space, and he’s in easy reach of the lightswitch that will flood the room with the excessive bright of the overhead lighting that Hannibal hardly ever uses except in cases when he has sufficient guests to merit the spill of illumination. But Hannibal neither reaches for the lightswitch nor moves towards the desk; for the first moments after Will leaves, he doesn’t move at all. He stays just as he was alongside the door, gazing at the weight of the dark-polished wood, the illusion of a barrier to a connection rendered unbreakable, now, stronger even than it was before; and Hannibal shuts his eyes, and draws a long, lingering breath into his lungs.

He can taste Will on his tongue. There’s that aftershave, of course, the tang of the artificial spice so strong as to be nearly cloying in his nose; but all the disguise Will adopts can no more cover the truth of his presence any more than his glasses hide the stark emotion in his eyes or his former mask of vulnerability truly softened the razor edge that lurked in the depths of his psyche. Hannibal has been searching for that resistance, reaching with both hands into the haunting shadows of Will’s mind until finally, at last now, he can feel his heartbeat throbbing as if into fingertips sliced bone-deep on the blade Will has finally forged of himself.

Hannibal tips his head back and lifts his chin to the ceiling overhead without opening his eyes. Gone is the clinging sweet that used to mask Will’s mind, that seemed to burn itself to a haze around his skin; the heat that sets itself there now is something intentional, a fire fed and kept by Will’s own hand more than a blaze urged on by Hannibal’s. Will is making a vessel of himself, has hollowed out what he deems unnecessary to leave the space for what he is creating from the ashes Hannibal left behind; Hannibal’s mouth waters at the thought, his tongue shifting against the backs of his teeth as if desperate for a taste of what Will is crafting behind that gaze that never trembles, anymore, in meeting Hannibal’s own. He had sat across from Hannibal, had relaxed back against the support of his chair in assurance more than the exhaustion it once would have been, and when Hannibal thinks of the flex of Will’s jaw and the set of his lips as he answered Hannibal’s questions with brutal accuracy, his own jaw softens, his mouth opens on a rush of air as if his breath is going to steam on the fire in his veins.

He turns away from the door, surrendering the indulgence of his closed eyes for a moment, long enough to step forward to the pair of chairs set to directly face each other. Hannibal pauses for a moment before them, his vision caught by the memory of Will’s slouched shoulders, of the confidence languid in his posture, in the open angle of his knee as he gazed full into Hannibal’s eyes. Then he steps forward to interpose himself into the memory, to return himself to his own position in the opposing chair, and as he settles himself into the support beneath him he feels anticipation unfurl along his spine, purring the pleasurable shudder of expectation through his veins. He leans himself back, reclining into his usual professional calm; and then he lets his eyelids shut over his vision, and tips his head back to the support of the chair behind him, and lets imagination take over him.

He can see Will. Even with his eyes shut, even with no one else in the room; even when the man himself was held behind locked bars, Hannibal has kept Will with him. It’s an intimacy, an indulgence for his own satisfaction; and Will looked at him today, met Hannibal’s eyes with the night-darkened shadows of his own, and Hannibal saw himself there too, chased back into the cup of Will’s mind to bleed into every breath, to infect every thought. Hannibal trails that now, following the thread as clearly as he might map the bite of that cheap scent in the air, as easily as he might slide a knife into raw meat, to claim the edges of Will’s words and peel them back over the shape of the form beneath.

_ Do you fantasize about killing me? _ A simple question, a direct interrogation; and answered as simply, Will’s jaw tightening on his response until his  _ Yes _ was more echo than statement. Hannibal had known, had been sure, could taste Will’s bloodlust ozone-hot in the air between them; but saying it is a step forward, closing what distance remains between them, like Will reaching out to band his grip around the stitched scars running over Hannibal’s wrists. Not a gun, for them, not the cold, impersonal distance stretching to a chasm; Hannibal had known, before he asked, had known even with Will’s trembling hand pointing the weapon at his face. Will will never shoot him, will never be satisfied with something so removed; and Will knows it too, knew it before Hannibal asked his question. It’s written in the way they shift around each other, in the line stretched taut between them by their matched ease in opposing chairs; in Will’s smoothed hair, and neat clothes, and steady eyes. Breath grows tight between them, heightened to the strain of anticipation by the fact of their sharing of it, as if they may lose their grasp on their mutual restraint if they draw too close, might snap together in an explosion of violence as instant and satisfying as magnetism.

Hannibal can imagine it.  _ With my hands_, Will had said, his gaze so intent Hannibal could feel the texture sliding against his throat, could sense the heat of Will’s grip closing to a vice around his neck. Hannibal’s throat works, shifting over a swallow, but the heat rises in him undeterred, clenching in his belly and rising to swell spreading branches out into the span of his lungs and the inside of his ribcage. Will would lean in over him, casting his shadow across the upward tilt of Hannibal’s face beneath him; his fingers would shift along Hannibal’s throat to curl and clench pressure against the rhythm of the other’s breathing. Hannibal can imagine it, can sense it, can all but feel the ghost of Will’s fingers in the strain building against his throat; as if he’s slipped himself into the space of Will’s imagination, as if the burning desire for vengeance in Will’s veins is seeping to blend with the pleasure in his own.

Hannibal wonders what it would feel like, from the perspective of Will’s dark gaze: to watch someone struggling beneath him, to turn that too-much empathy against the intimacy of bare-handed murder, so near that every breath comes stolen straight from the lips of one’s victim. Would he feel the struggle in Hannibal’s chest tight around his own, as if it were his own breathing fighting for traction against the press of his grip? Would Will’s lashes dip in time with Hannibal’s own, their focus blending and blurring as oxygen deprivation saps strength and clarity at once? Hannibal imagines it, his head tilted back to offer up the line of his pulse for Will’s fingers, his eyes open to watch the knowledge of his own violence reflected back in Will’s eyes; to watch the abyss open up and swallow Will alive with the same action that retrieves Hannibal’s life.

It’s an intoxicating thought even in the imagining, just in the testing of a potential swelling full and ripe after long cultivation. The knowledge, the fact, of Will losing himself to it is such a keen ache that Hannibal’s voice tightens in his throat to flutter to the ghost of a moan in the air. Hannibal thinks of Will at home, sitting in the falling shadows of night at his kitchen table, staring at the nothing in front of him while his fingers itch with the desire for violence, while his mind shadows and darkens with vicious imaginings; he thinks of Will’s hands on a gun, caressing the weight of the metal like a lover’s body while he thinks of the feel of Hannibal’s throat, of the raw immediacy of life spending itself under his fingers. He thinks of Will in bed, cast atop the sheets by the sweat-heat of his skin, grip working himself to a lesser satisfaction to better whet the greater; and Hannibal shifts back against his chair, rocking his shoulders into the support as he slides himself into a recline the better to ease the fastenings of his slacks free. He frees the buttons on his vest, unfolds his shirt up high enough that it will remain pristine, and then he leans himself back and gives himself over in full to the banquet of Will’s desire.

The satisfaction is sharp, bright and clear and crisp as revenge so often is. Hannibal can feel it as if he is the heart pounding in Will’s chest, as if he is one with the adrenaline surging through Will’s veins; the pleasure of triumph, the relief of victory, of overcoming that great darkness and insisting it to be different, separate,  _ evil_. There is a righteousness, a sunbright satisfaction to playing the crusader, to serving as the knight repulsing the forces of darkness. Hannibal sees it from the outside, for a moment: a monster vanquished, a villain stopped. But Will’s eyes are open, Will is watching him as intently as he gazed at Hannibal across the distance of the office, and as Hannibal lets himself slide into Will’s head he feels the clarity deepening, the first crisp notes unfolding into something lower, darker, startlingly resonant. There is an unmaking to this, as there is to all consumption, to all pleasure: the steadiness of Will’s fingers on Hannibal’s throat prove the fact of that change, of the corruption that has already lanced through whatever innocence Will once clung to. Will’s psyche is cracking, splitting itself into two under the seizing hold of his hands; or perhaps those fractures were always there, everpresent and never-tested until Hannibal’s interested efforts. The break is clean, razor-sharp behind Will’s gaze now; until Hannibal can see himself as clearly as Will, can find out the pieces of himself from the eyes that are the only mirror that have ever come close to truly capturing him.

Hannibal can see himself in Will, can bleed them together one into the other, until it becomes Will’s throat caught in the clench of his hold, until he’s the one leaning in over the other, or until they both are pinned together, caught and held by their own grasp as much as the other’s. Hannibal imagines the feel of it, the rising crescendo of sound, the symphony of their rasping breathing melding to a single desperate note of exquisite heat, and pleasure spills from his throat, forming a groan to the unhearing darkness of the room as the thought spends itself across his bared stomach. Hannibal’s body jolts, his muscles tightening and easing with the uncontrolled spasms that come with physical release; the waves of sensation rush up and over him, drowning his parted lips and fluttering his heavy eyelids as he comes. He imagines the crease at Will’s dark brows, feels the strain in the other’s throat as he shouts his own relief; and then the tension ebbs, sliding itself free of him to leave him languid in his chair, and Hannibal lets himself melt back against the support behind him as his imagination loosens its hold to retreat to the back of his mind again. He stays still for a moment, keeping his eyes shut while he feels his heart pounding in his chest, while he relishes the dull ache of physicality all through his limbs; then he lets it go and opens his eyes to look up at the ceiling overhead.

There is nothing to see, of course. The ceiling is far distant and well-hidden by the shadows that have crept in to take up residence in the office while Hannibal wandered into imagination; the best Hannibal can make out is the lines of one beam meeting another, and then more by squinting memory than true sight. He doesn’t reach for clarity, doesn’t strain to see the details above him; he just gazes, his eyes wandering idly while his attention sustains its favorite focus, that subject that has grown and expanded to absorb all of Hannibal’s attention into the dark suspicion of a pair of knowing eyes. Hannibal draws a breath through his nose, digging deep to pull past the unnecessary spice and get deeper, to the iron of blood and the dry-dust of bone, to that heat tempered now to vivid coals in the stare Will turns on him. Hannibal fills his chest with Will, draws the other into the very core of him to convert air to oxygen, oxygen to life; and then he smiles, and sits up, and rises to his feet to collect himself back into self-restraint.

It’s a sacrifice to pull himself back to composure, as it always is; but sacrifices come with reward, which Hannibal can feel coming for him now at last.


End file.
